The First Tycoon_ The Epic Life Of Cornelius Vanderbilt Part 1

The First Tyc.o.o.n.

The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt.

by T. J. Stiles.

Chapter One.

THE ISLANDER.

They came to learn his secrets. Well before the appointed hour of two o'clock in the afternoon on November 12, 1877, hundreds of spectators pushed into a courtroom in lower Manhattan. They included friends and relatives of the contestants, of course, as well as leading lawyers who wished to observe the forensic skills of the famous attorneys who would try the case. But most of the teeming ma.s.s of men and women-many fas.h.i.+onably dressed, crowding in until they were packed against the back wall-wanted to hear the details of the life of the richest man the United States had ever seen. The trial over the will of Cornelius Vanderbilt, the famous, notorious Commodore, was about to begin.

Shortly before the hour, the crowd parted to allow in William H. Vanderbilt, the Commodore's eldest son, and his lawyers, led by Henry L. Clinton. William, "glancing carelessly and indifferently around the room, removed his overcoat and comfortably settled himself in his chair," the New York Times New York Times reported; meanwhile his lawyers shook hands with the opposing team, led by Scott Lord, who represented William's sister Mary Vanderbilt La Bau. At exactly two o'clock, the judge-called the "Surrogate" in this Surrogate Court-strode briskly in from his chambers through a side door, stepped up to the dais, and took his seat. "Are you ready, gentlemen?" he asked. Lord and Clinton each declared that they were, and the Surrogate ordered, "Proceed, gentlemen." reported; meanwhile his lawyers shook hands with the opposing team, led by Scott Lord, who represented William's sister Mary Vanderbilt La Bau. At exactly two o'clock, the judge-called the "Surrogate" in this Surrogate Court-strode briskly in from his chambers through a side door, stepped up to the dais, and took his seat. "Are you ready, gentlemen?" he asked. Lord and Clinton each declared that they were, and the Surrogate ordered, "Proceed, gentlemen."1 Everyone who listened as Lord stood to make his opening argument knew just how great the stakes were. "THE HOUSE OF VANDERBILT," the Times Times headlined its story the next morning. " headlined its story the next morning. "A RAILROAD PRINCE'S FORTUNE. THE HEIRS CONTESTING THE WILL.... A BATTLE OVER $100,000,000." The only item in all that screaming type that would have surprised readers was the $100,000,000." The only item in all that screaming type that would have surprised readers was the Times's Times's demotion of Vanderbilt to "prince," since the press usually dubbed him the railroad demotion of Vanderbilt to "prince," since the press usually dubbed him the railroad king king. His fortune towered over the American economy to a degree difficult to imagine, even at the time. If he had been able to sell all his a.s.sets at full market value at the moment of his death, in January of that year, he would have taken one out of every twenty dollars in circulation, including cash and demand deposits.2 Most of those in that courtroom had lived their entire lives in Vanderbilt's shadow. By the time he had turned fifty he had dominated railroad and steamboat transportation between New York and New England (thus earning the nickname "Commodore"). In the 1850s, he had launched a transatlantic steams.h.i.+p line and pioneered a transit route to California across Nicaragua. In the 1860s, he had systematically seized control of the railroads that connected Manhattan with the rest of the world, building the mighty New York Central Railroad system between New York and Chicago. Probably every person in that chamber had pa.s.sed through Grand Central, the depot on Forty-second Street that Vanderbilt had constructed; had seen the enormous St. John's Park freight terminal that he had built, featuring a huge bronze statue of himself; had crossed the bridges over the tracks that he had sunk along Fourth Avenue (a step that would allow it to later blossom into Park Avenue); or had taken one of the ferries, steamboats, or steams.h.i.+ps that he had controlled over the course of his lifetime. He had stamped the city with his mark-a mark that would last well into the twenty-first century-and so had stamped the country. Virtually every American had paid tribute to his treasury.

More fascinating than the fortune was the man behind it. Lord began his attack by admitting "that it seemed hazardous to say that a man who acc.u.mulated $100,000,000 and was famous for his strength of will had not the power to dispose of his fortune." His strength of will was famous indeed. Vanderbilt had first ama.s.sed wealth as a compet.i.tor in the steamboat business, cutting fares against established lines until he forced his rivals to pay him to go away. The practice led the New York Times New York Times, a quarter of a century before his death, to introduce a new metaphor into the American vernacular by comparing him to the medieval robber barons who took a toll from all pa.s.sing traffic on the Rhine. His adventure in Nicaragua had been, in part, a matter of personal buccaneering, as he explored the pa.s.sage through the rain forest, piloted a riverboat through the rapids of the San Juan River, and decisively intervened in a war against an international criminal who had seized control of the country. His early life was filled with fistfights, high-speed steamboat duels, and engine explosions; his latter days were marked by daredevil harness races and high-stakes confrontations.

It was this personal drama that moved that crowd of spectators into the courtroom eleven months after his death, but more thoughtful observers mulled over his larger meaning. Vanderbilt was an empire builder, the first great corporate tyc.o.o.n in American history. Even before the United States became a truly industrial country, he learned to use the tools of corporate capitalism to ama.s.s wealth and power on a scale previously unknown, creating enterprises of unprecedented size. "He has introduced Caesarism into corporate life," wrote Charles Francis Adams Jr. "Vanderbilt is but the precursor of a cla.s.s of men who will wield within the state a power created by it, but too great for its control. He is the founder of a dynasty."3 Adams did not mean a family dynasty, but a line of corporate chiefs who would overshadow democratic government itself. Rockefeller, Carnegie, Gould, Morgan-all were just beginning their careers when Vanderbilt was at his height. They respected and followed his example, though they would be hard-pressed to match it. Few laws had constrained him; few governments had exceeded his influence. In the 1850s, his personal role in Central America had been more important than that of the White House or the State Department. In 1867, he had stopped all trains into New York City from the west to bring the New York Central Railroad to its knees. In 1869, he personally had abated a panic on Wall Street that threatened to ring in a depression.

His admirers saw him as the ultimate meritocrat, the finest example of the common man rising through hard work and ability To them, he symbolized America's opportunities. His critics called him grasping and ruthless, an unelected king who never pretended to rule for his people. Still worse, they saw him as the apex of a vulgar new culture that had cast off the republican purity of the Revolution for the golden calf of wealth. "You seem to be the idol of... a crawling swarm of small souls," Mark Twain wrote in an open letter to Vanderbilt, "who... sing of your unimportant private habits and sayings and doings, as if your millions gave them dignity"4 Perhaps there were those who understood that Vanderbilt's true significance was more complex, even contradictory. How could it not be? His life spanned a period of breathtaking changes, from the days of George Was.h.i.+ngton to those of John D. Rockefeller (with whom he made deals). He began his career in a rural, agricultural, essentially colonial society in which the term "businessman" was unknown; he ended it in a corporate, industrial economy5 Neither the admirers nor the critics of his later years had witnessed his role during the tumultuous era of the early republic and the antebellum period. They could not see that Vanderbilt had spent most of his career as a radical force. From his beginnings as a teenage boatman before the War of 1812, he had led the rise of compet.i.tion as a virtue in American culture. He had disrupted the remnants of the eighteenth-century patricians, shaken the conservative merchant elite, and destroyed monopolies at every step. His infuriated opponents had not shared his enthusiasm for compet.i.tion; rather, the wealthy establishment in that young and limited economy saw his attacks as destructive. In 1859, one had written that he "has always proved himself the enemy of every American maritime enterprise," and the Neither the admirers nor the critics of his later years had witnessed his role during the tumultuous era of the early republic and the antebellum period. They could not see that Vanderbilt had spent most of his career as a radical force. From his beginnings as a teenage boatman before the War of 1812, he had led the rise of compet.i.tion as a virtue in American culture. He had disrupted the remnants of the eighteenth-century patricians, shaken the conservative merchant elite, and destroyed monopolies at every step. His infuriated opponents had not shared his enthusiasm for compet.i.tion; rather, the wealthy establishment in that young and limited economy saw his attacks as destructive. In 1859, one had written that he "has always proved himself the enemy of every American maritime enterprise," and the New York Times New York Times condemned Vanderbilt for pursuing "compet.i.tion for compet.i.tion's sake." condemned Vanderbilt for pursuing "compet.i.tion for compet.i.tion's sake."6 Those on the other end of the spectrum had celebrated the way he had expanded transportation, slashed fares, and punished opponents who relied on government monopolies or subsidies. To Jacksonian Democrats, who championed laissez-faire as an egalitarian creed, he had epitomized the entrepreneur as champion of the people, the businessman as revolutionary. Those on the other end of the spectrum had celebrated the way he had expanded transportation, slashed fares, and punished opponents who relied on government monopolies or subsidies. To Jacksonian Democrats, who championed laissez-faire as an egalitarian creed, he had epitomized the entrepreneur as champion of the people, the businessman as revolutionary.

But the career that started early ended late, and the revolutionary completed his days as emperor. As he had expanded his railroad domain from the benighted New York & Harlem-annexing the Hudson River, the New York Central, the Lake Sh.o.r.e & Michigan Southern, and the Canada Southern-he had seemed not a radical but a monopolist. His role in the Erie War of 1868, with its epic corruption of public officials, had made him seem not a champion but an enemy of civic virtue. He played a leading part in the creation of a new ent.i.ty, the giant corporation, that would dominate the American economy in the decades after his death. The political landscape had changed as well. With the rise of large railroads and the expansion of federal power during the Civil War, radicals began to think of the government as a possible counterweight to corporate might. Vanderbilt had remained as committed to laissez-faire as ever; as he told the newspapers more than once, his guiding principle was "to mind my own business," and all he asked from government was to be left alone.7 He never acknowledged that, as Charles F. Adams Jr. wrote, the ma.s.sive corporations he commanded gave him power to rival that of the state, and that he became the establishment against which populists armed themselves with government regulation. He never acknowledged that, as Charles F. Adams Jr. wrote, the ma.s.sive corporations he commanded gave him power to rival that of the state, and that he became the establishment against which populists armed themselves with government regulation.

Probably no other individual made an equal impact over such an extended period on America's economy and society. Over the course of his sixty-six-year career he stood on the forefront of change, a modernizer from beginning to end. He vastly improved and expanded the nation's transportation infrastructure, contributing to a transformation of the very geography of the United States. He embraced new technologies and new forms of business organization, and used them to compete so successfully that he forced his rivals to follow his example or give up. Far ahead of many of his peers, he grasped one of the great changes in American culture: the abstraction of economic reality, as the connection faded between the tangible world and the new devices of business, such as paper currency, corporations, and securities. With those devices he helped to create the corporate economy that would define the United States into the twenty-first century. Even as he demonstrated the creative power of a market economy, he also exacerbated problems that would never be fully solved: a huge disparity in wealth between rich and poor; the concentration of great power in private hands; the fraud and self-serving deception that thrives in an unregulated environment. One person cannot move the national economy single-handedly-but no one else kept his hands on the lever for so long or pushed so hard.

The spectators in that courtroom, then, could mark Vanderbilt down as complicated indeed, even before the first witness spoke. Yet what pulled them there was perhaps not so much his national significance as his strange, powerful character, his mysterious personal life. Public rumor depicted a home wracked by intrigue, spiritualist seances, and Vanderbilt's controversial sponsors.h.i.+p of the feminist Victoria Woodhull and her voluptuous sister, Tennie C. Claflin. What the public did not see was his emotional complexity: his patient business diplomacy, his love for his first and second wives (as well as his selfishness with them), and his conflicting feelings about his often difficult children-especially Cornelius Jeremiah, who struggled with epilepsy and an addiction to gambling. Contemporaries and posterity alike often would overlook the very human, even sympathetic, side of the imperious Commodore, attracted instead to the most salacious, scandalous, and overblown reports.

It was his final act that brought everyone into that courtroom, an act that combined the personal and the corporate. He had built something that he meant to last and remain in the hands of his own bloodline-to found a dynasty in the most literal sense. To that end, he had drafted a will that left 95 percent of his estate to his eldest son, William. William's sister Mary meant to break that dynasty by breaking the will, to force a distribution of the estate equally among the ten surviving children.

Would she succeed? Each side would fight to define Vanderbilt; each side would seek out its own answer to the enigma of a man who left few letters and no diaries. Lord began to speak, and the crowd bent forward to listen, straining to learn who the Commodore really was.

A CHILD, IT IS SAID, CHANGES EVERYTHING. For Phebe Hand Vanderbilt, another child meant more of the same. In May 1794, during the last month of her fourth pregnancy, her first three children, Mary, Jacob, and Charlotte, ran about their humble house. Knowing the Vanderbilt tradition, she could expect many more to follow the unborn infant in her womb. Continuity not change, defined everything about her existence, an existence that differed little from that of her parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents. She sat in wooden furniture hand-cut from hand-hewn lumber. She wore clothes hand-sewn from hand-spun wool. She washed cups and plates that had been spun on a wheel, and bottles blown by a craftsman's mouth. Looking out a window, she would see hand-built wagons harnessed to teams of horses. Peering a little farther, she could watch the sloops and s.h.i.+ps that sailed by the sh.o.r.e just steps from her door. And at night she would light the room with a mutton-fat candle or a whale-oil lamp.

Phebe lived in a close wooden world made by human hands, powered by winds and horse and human strength, cl.u.s.tered at the water's edge. Most of the technology she knew had been first imagined thousands of years before. Even the newest inventions of her time-the clock, the printing press, the instruments of navigation-dated back to the early Renaissance. The "Brown Bess" muskets stored in U.S. a.r.s.enals and carried by British redcoats had been designed in the 1690s, a full century before. Revolutions were a matter for politics; the constructed world merely crept ahead.8 Phebe lived in Port Richmond, that most ancient kind of community-a farming village, its air pungent with the smell of animal manure and open fires, its unpaved paths sticky with mud from the season's rains. It sat on the northern edge of Richmond County better known as Staten Island, a sprawling, spa.r.s.ely occupied landscape of not quite four thousand souls who still governed their affairs with town meetings. The islanders tilled the steep green hillsides, let pigs wander and forage for themselves, and built their houses close to the soft, swampy sh.o.r.es that crumbled into the kills-the tidal creeks that wrapped around the island's edges. Staten Island sat like a stopper in the mouth of New York Harbor, separated from Long Island by the two-mile-long Narrows, where the ocean decanted into the bay. West of Staten Island stretched the mainland of New Jersey, and across the length of the harbor sat Manhattan, a long and narrow island that extended between the deep East and Hudson (or North) rivers like a natural pier of bedrock.

An island is defined by its edges. Phebe looked across the water for her husband's return whenever he was gone, until he sailed up in his boat and tied it fast. His name was Cornelius. It was a solid Dutch name, as was Vanderbilt, and both were common around New York Bay. The first of his family had arrived in America in 1650, when Jan Aertsen Van Der Bilt settled in the Dutch colony of New Netherlands. In 1715, long after the English had conquered the province and renamed it New York, one of Jan's descendants had crossed the water to spa.r.s.ely populated Staten Island. That one move was change enough, it seems, for the family that dispersed and multiplied there. The ensuing generations lived out their lives as farmers or tavern keepers, unmoved by the climactic North American war with France in the 1750s, the outbreak of revolution two decades later, the British occupation of their island, the triumph of independence, the ratification of the Const.i.tution, and the swearing in of President George Was.h.i.+ngton in Manhattan.

On May 27, 1794, Phebe gave birth to her fourth child. She underscored the sense of continuity by naming him Cornelius, too, though they called the boy Cornele. She cooed over him in English. Phebe had first met her husband in Port Richmond, a heavily Dutch village, where she had been working as a servant in the home of a minister, but she herself came from an old English family in New Jersey.

In the town of New York this sort of intermarriage surprised no one. There the Dutch had fallen to less than half the population as early as 1720; now they were less a minority than an interbred strand among its 33,000 residents. As early as the rule of Petrus Stuyvesant in 1647, the village then named New Amsterdam had grown into a rather cosmopolitan place. Stuyvesant governed under the authority of the Dutch West India Company, created to mobilize merchant capital to advance Dutch interests in the New World. Under his administration, the little seaport came to reflect the commercial orientation of the Netherlands, the most industrious nation of seventeenth-century Europe. As in the mother country, the primacy of trade, foreign trade in particular, had fostered a tolerance of strangers and disparate creeds (at a time when being a Quaker was a hanging offense in Ma.s.sachusetts), and that tradition persisted.9 On Staten Island, a slightly different legacy prevailed. Most of the original Dutch settlers in New Netherlands, including Jan Aertsen Van Der Bilt, came to farm. They spread out on either side of New York Bay and the Hudson River (known as the North River well into the nineteenth century) from Staten Island to Albany. Theirs was an inward-looking, rural society and Americans of British descent often viewed them with distaste. "Nothing can exceed the state of indolence and ignorance in which these Dutchmen are described to live," wrote traveler William Strickland in the 1790s. "Many of them are supposed to live and die without having been five miles from their own houses." Outsiders generally considered the Dutch rude; one English-speaking Hudson Valley resident, for example, complained about "what I call Dutch politeness." At times suspicion boiled over into blows.10 These great-great-grandchildren of the Netherlands carried on old customs for decade after decade. As late as 1836, a diarist wrote, "It is difficult to turn the Dutch population from their old established ways." Women in high caps continued to serve "oely-coeks," sweetened b.a.l.l.s of deep-fried dough; men often went about in traditional clothes, including the broad-brimmed beaver hat. And they preferred to speak "Laeg-Duits," or "Low Dutch." By 1790, this dialect had evolved into a tongue that was incomprehensible to natives of the Netherlands, but it was heard all along the North River and New York Harbor. In one telling measure, three-quarters of 1,232 runaway slaves in the region at the beginning of the nineteenth century spoke Low Dutch.

Those slaves point to another difference between the Dutch and their English-speaking neighbors. In 1799, the state of New York pa.s.sed the Gradual Manumission Act, phasing out slavery over twenty-eight years. Opposition to the law came largely from rural Dutch areas. In 1790, only 11.3 percent of English families owned slaves, compared to 27.9 percent of the Dutch-and one out of every three families in northern Staten Island. As international merchants, the Dutch had played a central part in introducing slavery to North America; as New York-area farmers, they carried on the inst.i.tution to the last.11 Slavery, in addition to being an oppressive social system, was a commercial inst.i.tution, providing both labor and property. Its presence revealed another distinctive feature of the rural Dutch: they farmed for profit. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, this was a notable fact. Even into the 1800s, many English-speaking farmers in New York and New England devoted much of their effort to subsistence-though not necessarily by choice-whereas Dutch farming "was market-oriented," in the words of one historian, "and derived its distinct regional characteristics from Dutch tradition."

The rural Dutch, then, shared much of the commercial consciousness of their urban brethren. They clattered their wagons into Albany, New Brunswick, and New York to sell their produce with a savvy that became proverbial. When a cobbler refused to return a man's shoes until he made full payment, for example, the frustrated customer wrote in his diary, "He is too Dutch by half." These perceptions led to such coinages as "Dutch treat." A more charitable observer linked this shrewdness, this market orientation, to a detachment from public life. "The low Dutch are a quiet, frugal people," he wrote in 1786, "possess considerable property, are afraid to run into Debt, without being fond of law, or Offices of Government."

There was, perhaps, one more inheritance from the land of dikes and tulips for the newborn boy on Staten Island: independent women. Dutch law extended substantial autonomy to women, compared to British custom, and the fact was reflected in society "Strong and a.s.sertive Dutch wives were commonplace," observe two historians of New York City. Even after the English conquest, the tradition persisted, and Dutch women conducted business in their own names.12 Cornelius and Phebe Vanderbilt carried on these folkways faithfully, giving them no more thought than Staten Island's trails and landings, established long ago by their ancestors. Cornelius's own parents had died when he was young, leaving him no estate worth the name. Within a few years of the birth of his namesake, he achieved sufficient prosperity to move his family-little Cornele and his three older siblings, along with younger sisters Phebe, Jane, and Eleanor-to a roomier house east of Port Richmond, in what would become the village of Stapleton. This two-story wooden structure, with a steep-sloped roof, chimneys at either end, three dormer windows, and a porch that ran its width, sat amid pear and cherry trees, just two hundred feet from the sh.o.r.es of the Narrows.

They were pulled to the water's edge by the gravity of commerce. Living across the bay from New York, the Vanderbilts enjoyed a year-round market for their produce, something rare for American farmers. The longstanding trade between the crowded town and its neighboring sh.o.r.es had led the Dutch to develop a specialized vessel, a large, two-masted boat known as a periauger (or pettiauger).13 In an act that spoke volumes about Cornelius's commitment to acc.u.mulation, he built or bought his own periauger and began to sell his services, ferrying his neighbors and their produce across the bay. As other work for the boat presented itself, he began to attend to the water as much as to his farm. In an act that spoke volumes about Cornelius's commitment to acc.u.mulation, he built or bought his own periauger and began to sell his services, ferrying his neighbors and their produce across the bay. As other work for the boat presented itself, he began to attend to the water as much as to his farm.

In some ways, it would be Phebe who would prove to be the more Dutch of the two. Like the cla.s.sic wife of New Netherlands tradition, she radiated strength of personality. "She was not only the family oracle," one nineteenth-century writer declared, "she was the oracle of the neighborhood, whose advice was sought in all sorts of dilemmas, and whose judgment had weight." She was also as much a creature of the marketplace as her husband, as she sent her vegetables and sewing and whatever else she produced to town in her husband's boat. When cash came in, she would count the silver coins, march to her tall grandfather clock, and stow them within. Her shrewdness outshone that of her husband at times. According to tale, Cornelius once mortgaged the farm to finance a deal that then failed utterly. Phebe heard his confession, went to the clock, and came back with the entire amount. It was a legend, but one with a basis in fact: later court records show that she lent money at commercial rates of interest, and once foreclosed on a widow's mortgage-the widow being her own daughter. It seems that silver rarely stayed in the clock for long before Phebe found a better place to invest it.14 Ambition and inventiveness, practicality and toughness: the mixture of virtues that emerged from the marriage of these two people lifted them out of the poverty in which they had begun their lives together. They created a household where, far earlier than in more remote communities, the marketplace strode in the door and shaped their lives. Farmers living up the Hudson straggled along with much more haphazard connections to the world of commerce; one study found that the average household made just one delivery of crops and handicrafts to riverside merchants in an entire year. How different it was in the Vanderbilt house, where daily life was filled with buying and selling, borrowing and lending, earnings and debt. "The desire of riches is their ruling pa.s.sion," a French observer wrote of Americans at this time, "and indeed their only pa.s.sion." He could easily have been describing Phebe and Cornelius.15 But where would their pa.s.sion take them? The future they could envision was in keeping with past generations of Vanderbilts, a set of possibilities confined within the water's edge that wrapped around them: a farm, a boat, perhaps a tavern, perhaps more land. The thin dispersal of people in a rural landscape dispersed opportunity as well. But unlike most country folk, the Vanderbilts lived within sight of the place of the most densely concentrated possibilities in North America: the city of New York.

THE DUC DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD-LIANCOURT stared in wonder across the bay. Standing at the Battery, the plaza marking Manhattan's southern tip, he gasped at the view. "In this promenade," he wrote, "the eye embraces at once all the outlets of this great port, and sees all its s.h.i.+pping come in and go out." In a glance, he saw the marshy sh.o.r.es of New Jersey, the bluffs of Brooklyn, and directly across the green hillsides of Staten Island, looming above the Vanderbilt farm. In between billowed the sails of s.h.i.+ps and sloops pa.s.sing up and down the rivers, sailing to and from the ocean, mooring and unmooring from the piers that fingered the water. The scene, he sighed, made the Battery "incomparably the most delightful public walk anywhere to be found." stared in wonder across the bay. Standing at the Battery, the plaza marking Manhattan's southern tip, he gasped at the view. "In this promenade," he wrote, "the eye embraces at once all the outlets of this great port, and sees all its s.h.i.+pping come in and go out." In a glance, he saw the marshy sh.o.r.es of New Jersey, the bluffs of Brooklyn, and directly across the green hillsides of Staten Island, looming above the Vanderbilt farm. In between billowed the sails of s.h.i.+ps and sloops pa.s.sing up and down the rivers, sailing to and from the ocean, mooring and unmooring from the piers that fingered the water. The scene, he sighed, made the Battery "incomparably the most delightful public walk anywhere to be found."16 In 1795 he had sailed across the ocean to North America, where he wandered as an exile for three years. They were years spent very much on the edge of civilization. The United States was a nation with gra.s.s between its toes. Only five cities held more than ten thousand residents; the percentage of the nation's four million citizens who lived in towns of at least 2,500 people languished in the single digits, and would linger there for decades to come. Most lived in farms, villages, and landings scattered along the long Atlantic coast.17 Across the Atlantic, Europe burned. In France, the king had been executed, thousands more had been guillotined during the Terror, and the ma.s.sed armies of the surrounding monarchies marched in to crush the revolution. How different the United States was: during Rochefoucauld-Liancourt's three years there, the nation's military hero, George Was.h.i.+ngton, voluntarily stepped down from the presidency, declining to stand for a third term. Despite some pointed political debate, no heads rolled when John Adams a.s.sumed the office in 1797. Here was a peaceful, stable republic, whose white-wigged leaders spoke of honor, service, and the example of cla.s.sical Rome.

What captured the Frenchman's imagination, as he looked out over the s.h.i.+ps crowding New York Harbor, was not politics but economics. Again and again, Rochefoucauld-Liancourt had observed the Americans' "ardour for enterprise." When he turned and strolled up Broadway, past bustling stores and workshops, under the ringing hammers and shouts of workmen erecting new buildings, he marveled that every inhabitant seemed to cherish "the project of making an ample and rapid fortune.... Few of them are contented with what they have."

It was that sense of the public mood, of the emerging American character, that illuminated Rochefoucauld-Liancourt's vision of this country. The United States, he wrote, "is destined by nature for a state of strength and greatness, which nothing can prevent her from attaining." The prophecy was far from obvious: despite the enormous geographical size of the republic, it was desperately underpopulated, with only a skeletal military establishment. And yet Rochefoucauld-Liancourt boldly predicted that it would attain "a degree of prosperity, which must in future render this part of the world the rival, perhaps the fortunate [i.e., more successful] rival, of Europe."

There was, however, an obstacle standing between the young republic and its destiny. A sophisticated as well as inquisitive traveler, Rochefoucauld-Liancourt saw that New York's busy harbor spoke of weakness as well as strength. A momentary disarrangement of the world-the war between France and its enemies-had allowed American merchants to step in as s.h.i.+ppers to all nations. European ports once closed to Americans now stood open; competing merchant fleets now sat at their piers or were impressed into naval service. But Americans traded comparatively little with each other; merchantmen sailed from New York for Europe or the Caribbean rather than Baltimore or Boston. And fully half of American exports, in terms of value, were re-exports re-exports of goods arriving from overseas, rather than sales of U.S. products. of goods arriving from overseas, rather than sales of U.S. products.

"The prosperity of a nation's commerce cannot be durable, unless it be founded upon a solid basis," Rochefoucauld-Liancourt warned; "and the solid basis of a nation's commerce is the produce of its soil, of its manufactures." But Americans manufactured little that they could sell to each other, beyond the confines of a local community. For a century and a half, London's imperial policies had molded the North American colonies into suppliers of raw materials and consumers of British manufactured goods. As a result, foreign trade had been at least four times greater than domestic during the colonial era, as each port gathered in crops and raw material from its immediate hinterland and s.h.i.+pped them abroad. Even now, foreign trade remained two or three times greater. The ports of the United States were an unstrung line of pearls, s.h.i.+ning with Europe's trade but with little to hold them together when peace returned.18 If there was any place where that would start to change, where the republic would begin to grow into a cohesive nation nation and so grow great, it must be New York. When Rochefoucauld-Liancourt arrived in August 1797, the advantages of its location could hardly be missed. "The situation of this city in point of commercial importance," observed a foreign visitor, "is surpa.s.sed by none in the United States." Centrally placed between New England and the rest of the states, sitting on a large and sheltered deep-water harbor at the junction of the Hudson River, Long Island Sound, and the sea lanes to Europe, New York drew an ever-greater portion of American trade. By 1807, an Englishman could describe it as "the first city in the United States for wealth, commerce, and population." and so grow great, it must be New York. When Rochefoucauld-Liancourt arrived in August 1797, the advantages of its location could hardly be missed. "The situation of this city in point of commercial importance," observed a foreign visitor, "is surpa.s.sed by none in the United States." Centrally placed between New England and the rest of the states, sitting on a large and sheltered deep-water harbor at the junction of the Hudson River, Long Island Sound, and the sea lanes to Europe, New York drew an ever-greater portion of American trade. By 1807, an Englishman could describe it as "the first city in the United States for wealth, commerce, and population."

And yet, New York remained in the moment of its dawn. In 1790, it remained the second city in population in the United States, with only 33,131 to Philadelphia's 54,388. New York nearly doubled by 1800 to 60,515, but even then it was hardly a grand affair. In 1811, one visiting Scotsman dismissed it as an "overgrown sea-port village." Like a rock in a sock, New York sank into Manhattan's toe, leaving most of the island to pastures, fields, and swamps. Much of the city's growth was not upward but seaward. South Street, for example, was constructed in the first decade of the 1800s on landfill dumped along the East River sh.o.r.e.19 But then, the waterfront was the very reason for New York's existence. "Belted round by wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs," Herman Melville would write, "commerce surrounds it with her surf." Every visitor, it seems, felt compelled to comment on the teeming scene. "The wharfs were crowded with s.h.i.+pping, whose tall masts mingled with the buildings," wrote John Lambert, after seeing it all in 1807, "and together with the spires and cupolas of the churches, gave the city an appearance of magnificence."20 Closer inspection tended to ruin that impression. To be blunt, the city stank. The docks consisted of solid ma.s.ses of stone and dirt packed into wooden cribs, creating enclosures called slips. The water within the slips, observed a traveler, "being completely out of the current of the stream or tide, are little else than stagnant receptacles of city filth; while at the top of the wharves exhibits one continuous ma.s.s of clotted nuisance, composed of dust, tea, oil, mola.s.ses, &c., where revel countless swarms of offensive flies."

Within the belt of wharves, this overgrown seaport village swarmed with men rus.h.i.+ng to make money. "Every thought, word, look, and action of the mult.i.tude," Lambert observed, "seemed to be absorbed by commerce." The impression deepened with each step along South Street. "Every thing was in motion; all was life, bustle, and activity," he wrote. "The carters were driving in every direction; and the sailors and labourers upon the wharfs, and on board the vessels, were moving their ponderous burthens from place to place." Penetrating a block or two deeper into town, one wandered through the twisting corridors of Pearl, Water, and Front streets, narrow lanes that were home to most of the city's "countinghouses," or merchants' offices and warehouses. A frenzy of construction was replacing old wooden houses with new brick buildings, standing shoulder to shoulder under slanting tile roofs, along new brick sidewalks lit by whale-oil lamps at night and bustling with business by day. "The Coffee-House Slip, and the corners of Wall and Pearl streets, were jammed up with carts, drays, and wheel-barrows," Lambert wrote; "horses and men were huddled promiscuously together, leaving little or no room for pa.s.sengers to pa.s.s."21 Thirty years earlier, John Adams had expressed other reservations. "With all the opulence and splendor of this city, there is very little good breeding to be found," he had noted in his diary. "They talk very loud, very fast, and all together. If they ask you a question, before you can utter three words of your answer, they will break out upon you again, and talk away." These habits would never really change. But at least one visitor found New Yorkers' directness refres.h.i.+ng. "The people of Philadelphia are stiff in their manners," he noted by way of contrast, "& not so hospitable as those of New York." This was a more cosmopolitan place, he observed, thronging with an "immense number of foreigners established in N. Y, attracted thither by the advantages of its commercial importance."22 Commercial importance brought luxury, best seen on Broadway, the most fas.h.i.+onable street in North America. It flowed north from the Battery, glistening with enough elegance to impress even Rochefoucauld-Liancourt. "There is not in any city in the world a finer street than Broadway," he declared. Lambert marveled at the boulevard's "large commodious shops of every description ... exhibiting as splendid and varied a show in their windows as can be met with in London. There are several and extensive book stores, print-shops, music-shops, jewelers, and silversmiths; hatters, linen-drapers, milliners, pastry-cooks, coach-makers, hotels, and coffee-houses." At the northern end of Broadway rose the new marble-clad city hall, presiding over an eponymous triangular park.

Still, with every mark of sophistication came a reminder of New York's rustic immaturity Beyond City Hall Park steeped a stinking pond called the Collect. Surrounded by a nauseating cl.u.s.ter of tanneries and slaughterhouses, the Collect was rapidly filled in after 1802, but the area was avoided by all who could help it. The back of the city hall was left undressed with marble because contemporaries thought "it was not likely to attract much notice." But even the best neighborhood had its woes.

"It is remarked on all hands," admitted the author of a guide to New York in 1817, "that the streets of New-York are the dirtiest in the United States." There were the backyard lavatories, for one thing, that overflowed with every heavy rain. And then there were the roaming herds of "innumerable hungry pigs of all sizes and complexions." Because of the swine, a pet.i.tion of laborers explained, "many poor are able to pay rents and supply families with animal food during the winter." The pig was "our best scavenger," because it ate "fish, guts, garbage, and offals of every kind," and was smart enough to find its way home each night. But the hogs perpetuated the habit of strewing rotten waste into the gutters. "So long as immense numbers of swine are allowed to traverse the streets," wrote the travel-guide author, "so long will the inhabitants think themselves justified in throwing out their garbage to them for food; and so long will the streets of New-York remain proverbial for their filth."23 The same tension between sophistication and simplicity-if not exactly squalor-could be felt off the streets as well, in the countinghouses, where clerks perched on high stools and scratched with quills in copy books, where porters lumbered in and out with sacks, crates, and barrels. A quarter of a century had pa.s.sed since Adam Smith had explained the division of labor in The Wealth of Nations; The Wealth of Nations; yet this commercial community remained a city of the unspecialized. Apart from artisans who sold merely what they made, the economy belonged to general merchants. yet this commercial community remained a city of the unspecialized. Apart from artisans who sold merely what they made, the economy belonged to general merchants.

"Their activities," writes historian George Rogers Taylor, "comprehended almost every aspect of business." Each master of the counting-house (perhaps with two or three partners) bought and sold cargoes of goods, owned the s.h.i.+ps that carried them, and warehoused them in the same building with his office. He distributed these goods to smaller general merchants in towns and villages, and perhaps retailed them from his own storefront, and spun out a web of credit to his customers. He made no specialty of any particular product, but bought and sold what he could.24 He also traded in promissory notes and bills of exchange. Cash was scarce. British law had banned exports of specie (precious-metal coins, worth their face value in gold or silver) to the colonies and prohibited them from minting their own. Americans mostly used foreign coins acquired in their trade with the Caribbean-especially Spanish dollars (the legendary "pieces of eight") and their const.i.tuent eighth-dollar coins. As the United States began to mint its own coins, Congress made the new American dollar equal to the Spanish in silver content, for an easier transition. In New York slang, the eighth-dollar coin, worth twelve and a half cents, was known as a "s.h.i.+lling" well into the nineteenth century.*1 (Spanish pieces of eight continued to circulate in the United States as legal tender until 1857.) (Spanish pieces of eight continued to circulate in the United States as legal tender until 1857.)25 By any name, silver was hard to come by, so Americans made do with informal devices. A bill of exchange, for example, was a certificate of debt written up by a merchant who was owed money by a party in a distant place-London was a common case. It would be purchased by someone in New York who owed money in London. The buyer would then send it across the Atlantic with instructions for the seller's debtor to pay his own creditor. In this way, the movement of coin and final settlement of credit took place locally, at either end of these long-distance transactions. But the system was highly personal and unpredictable; it depended heavily on how well individuals knew and trusted each other. Because of the risks, the buyers of bills usually paid less than face value for them, driving up costs for everyone.

Locally, merchants usually paid each other with promissory notes, pledging payment with interest on specific dates. The recipient of one would endorse it, then use it to pay his own debts. But if the person who first issued it refused to pay when it came due, the endorser could be sued for payment, "according to the usage and custom of merchants," as the standard legal form read. It's notable that there was was a standard legal form (in New York at least), indicating just how common unpaid notes were. And yet, promissory notes would remain a primary method of payment for decades to come. a standard legal form (in New York at least), indicating just how common unpaid notes were. And yet, promissory notes would remain a primary method of payment for decades to come.26 If this unspecialized, informal economy were to change, it would first be through organization, by inst.i.tutions that would replace these messy personal dealings. And it was in New York where just such inst.i.tutions began to rise. It was there that the merchants' patron saint, Alexander Hamilton, helped to found the Bank of New York, one of the nation's first commercial banks. Commercial banks concentrated money for bigger loans; as specialized, professional lenders, they tended to make better choices about borrowers than individuals did, so their loans were more productive. Banks also eased the cash shortage. They began to experiment with checking early on, and they also made loans by issuing banknotes-paper money-that could be redeemed at the bank for gold or silver coin.

Hamilton's role in the Bank of New York was nothing compared to what he accomplished as secretary of the treasury in Was.h.i.+ngton's first term, when the federal capital was temporarily located in Manhattan. In 1790, he presented a plan to have the federal government a.s.sume the states' Revolutionary War debts, paying for them with interest-bearing federal bonds, backed by a tariff and an excise tax on whiskey. Despite fierce resistance by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, Congress enacted the program. The new federal bonds-known as "the Stock"-essentially created the securities market in New York, and by extension in America. The Stock's interest payments funneled federal revenue-those hard-to-come-by silver coins-to merchants, who invested the money in their enterprises. More important, the federal bonds provided a universal form of payment and collateral. The first, cautious banks in America unhesitatingly loaned money to merchants who mortgaged them; the Stock also provided a convenient means of payment over long distances, as they held their value anywhere in the country, even overseas in the British and Dutch markets.

The Stock was soon joined by shares in two banks: the new, federally chartered Bank of the United States (the second part of Hamilton's financial plan), and the older Bank of New York, which acquired a state charter and issued shares that year. Investors in New York began to meet six times a week for formal stock auctions at the Merchants' Coffee House on Wall Street; between sessions, they cl.u.s.tered outside under a b.u.t.tonwood tree to trade informally. In 1792, they formalized the stock market with the b.u.t.tonwood Agreement, setting fixed commissions for brokers (or "stockjobbers") and establis.h.i.+ng the Tontine Coffee House at the corner of Wall and Water streets as a physical exchange (though the informal "curb market" continued to thrive).27 These new inst.i.tutions laid a foundation that was absolutely essential for the future. But their immediate scope and impact should not be exaggerated. The stock market remained small for many years, because there was little stock to trade. In 1792, the New York stock exchange publicly quoted the price of just five securities, including three federal bonds; by 1815, the number had grown to only twenty-three. The vast majority of businesses remained partners.h.i.+ps or personal proprietors.h.i.+ps. As a business historian notes, a corporation was "considered appropriate only when the enterprise was intended to perform a public service," such as the construction of a bridge or turnpike. A special act of the state legislature was required for every corporate charter. Few corporations had widely traded shares, and many were small, with a handful of investors, serving essentially as a new form for the traditional partners.h.i.+p.28 Every place, of course, is the scene of continuity But not every place is equally a fulcrum of change. New York's geographical advantages-its deep-water port at the end of a long river into the interior of the country-had attracted first imperial planners and then private merchants. Its density of merchants in turn gave rise to innovations in finance and business methods. A self-feeding cycle began to emerge, a multiplication of people and commerce, and needs and solutions, that was already starting to magnify New York's significance for the country as a whole.

Of all the accidents that would make the little boy Cornele into the man he would become, perhaps the most important was the location of his birthplace. From his waterside farmhouse hard by the Narrows, the future flowed in only one direction-toward the steeples and masts that marked the city across the bay.

A THIN LINE SEPARATES destiny from coincidence. A child's pa.s.sion may begin a lifelong obsession; or a momentary interest, no more vehement than any other, may be remembered as an omen, thanks to the exaggeration of hindsight. For Cornele, the defining moment was a race. He was only six, he later recalled, when he rode a horse through the surf against another ridden by a neighbor's child slave. It would seem absurd if his rival had not returned decades later to publicly confirm the story. But what matters is that Cornele's earliest memory, the beginning of his self-image, was of compet.i.tion-and victory. destiny from coincidence. A child's pa.s.sion may begin a lifelong obsession; or a momentary interest, no more vehement than any other, may be remembered as an omen, thanks to the exaggeration of hindsight. For Cornele, the defining moment was a race. He was only six, he later recalled, when he rode a horse through the surf against another ridden by a neighbor's child slave. It would seem absurd if his rival had not returned decades later to publicly confirm the story. But what matters is that Cornele's earliest memory, the beginning of his self-image, was of compet.i.tion-and victory.

A taste for compet.i.tion may have been the natural result of growing up in a household filled with children. Certainly he never lacked confidence. With long limbs, a head of sandy hair, full lips, and a strong chin, he boasted a pair of penetrating eyes set between a high forehead and a long, sharp nose like the prow of a s.h.i.+p. A strong swimmer, he quickly grew tall and athletic, capable of immense labors and endurance.29 Farm life has always tended to erode the line between childhood and adulthood. Cornele lived a life of work and responsibility, hoeing and milking, piling and shoveling. There was church, too-Moravian services, the legacy of a conversion generations before that had taken the Vanderbilt family out of the Dutch Reformed tradition. But the sermons and hymns left no mark on him. He went to school briefly-for a mere three months, by one account-and would recall it as an agonizing process of rote memorization, drill, and punishment. Though he learned to read well enough, he manifested a lasting contempt for the conventions of written English. The handwritten letters that survive from his early twenties-the ink that flowed from a split nib, freshly dipped in an inkwell, now faded on brown, crumbling paper-show an alarming level of innovation in spelling. "See" became "sea" or even "se"-all in the same letter. To "know" was to "no." And he wrote "wrote" as "roat." His casual written diction stood in sharp contrast to the formality of the letters of contemporaries, even of those who also had little education.

Indeed, Cornele wrote so phonetically that it is possible to reconstruct his pattern of speech. Some of his quirks are not surprising. A man who has returned home, for example, "is got home;" if he was forbidden, he was "forbid;" if he ought to have been, he "aught a bean." Cornele's conversations featured now unusual or long-lost p.r.o.nunciations (such as "ginerally" for "generally"), including the frequent use of a long "a": "air" for are are, and "wair" for were for were. He also said "git" for get for get, "sence" for since since, and he did not remember remember, but would "recollect." And, like many others around New York Bay, he would add "a" before a verb ending in -ing, as in "Mr. Jones is agoing to Albany"30 When he was eleven, his older brother Jacob died. The event, scarcely mentioned in later years by Cornele or his chroniclers, surely shook this young boy's life. Already the family had lost a child-Phebe, born next after Cornele, had died very young-but Jacob died as a teenager, at an age when he no doubt served as his father's closest a.s.sistant in his operations and ambitions. Even apart from the emotional trauma of the loss of a brother, the event turned Cornele from a middle child into the oldest son. Small wonder that he left the schoolroom so young.31 Few traces remain of Cornele's childhood, such as it was. What is known is a mirage, a hazy image floating above the real childhood. It consists of stories repeated by the man the boy became, solidified into a portrait with frequent retelling, colored by admirers. The haziness, the distance, and the repet.i.tion not only cast doubts on the accuracy of the image, they raise questions about what it really means.

The mirage tells us that, as early as 1805, during the presidency of Thomas Jefferson, the eleven-year-old boy began to work alongside his father in the periauger. Taking the place of his dead brother, he learned to man the tiller, to raise and set the sails, to tack into the wind. He grew comfortable with the vessel heeling steeply in a stiff breeze, the masts dipping toward the waves, or cras.h.i.+ng through a rising storm. One morning, the story goes, the boy awoke to a day he had been looking forward to. His father had promised him a reward for a particularly exhausting ch.o.r.e of hoeing a potato field: Cornele could take his friend Owen in the periauger to New York and spend the day. Cornele gathered Owen and ran down to the sh.o.r.e, where his father stood beside a stack of hay he had contracted to deliver to the city "Now, Cornele, there's the periauger for you," Vanderbilt recalled his father saying. "I've pitched on more than half the hay, you and Owen can just pitch on the rest, and take it up and unload it at the wharf as usual, and you can play on the way." He tossed his son a few pennies, and left him to do the work. "A boy can get fun out of most anything," Vanderbilt later grumbled, "and we got some fun out of that; but I remember we were just as tired that night as if we had been working."

But what does the story mean? That the eleven-year-old was trustworthy enough to make a delivery across several miles of open water to what was now the biggest city in the country? That he resented his father's total control over his life? Probably something in both these explanations sealed the tale's place in Cornele's memory. But, observed across the chasm of two centuries, the story seems to demonstrate how the nearness of New York overshadowed this family, filling their lives with commerce, turning even a boy's play into a chance for profit. It is a story that could not be told about the more distant reaches of rural America.

The mirage expands. The next year, it tells us, Cornele's father took a contract to retrieve the cargo from a s.h.i.+p that had run ash.o.r.e at Sandy Hook, the great sandbar that extends from New Jersey outside of Staten Island. Cornelius marshaled some laborers, three wagons, and a few row-boats to do the work. He put his son in charge of the wagons as they shuttled the cargo from the beached s.h.i.+p across the sandbar to the boats on the other side. Cornelius departed with the scows, leaving Cornele to lead the wagons and teamsters on the long drive to the ferry at South Amboy By the time the boy and his men arrived, he had spent all his money on food and feed-but the ferryman demanded $6 for the crossing. Thinking quickly, Cornele went to a tavern and asked to borrow the money from the proprietor, offering to leave one of his horses and promising to redeem it with cash within twenty-four hours. The innkeeper agreed. They crossed, and the boy soon returned to give the innkeeper his money back.

The story would later be told as an example of Cornele's resourcefulness, but (if true) it too contains signposts that point to larger matters. For one thing, his family had so immersed him in business that, at the age of twelve, he already understood the principle of borrowing on collateral security. And the entire enterprise of salvaging a wreck further highlights the way the port of New York defined their lives.

There was another aspect of this tale that surely made an impression on the boy: the ferryman's ability to demand his own price. As an islander, Cornele could not help but feel that power in his bones. Living across the water from Manhattan and the mainland, he developed a sensitivity to the s.p.a.ces between, to the significance of the crossing, to the strategic importance of the vessel that conveys from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e. This knowledge, formed early in his mind, would serve him all of his life.32 But he was still a boy. Though it is reasonable to believe that he knew the marketplace better than the typical child, it is just as reasonable to believe that he reveled in his physicality-that he was moved by a "pride in action for action's sake" that a later friend attributed to his youth. That trait drew him to New York's waterfront, with all its furious activity: the strutting captains and mates; the insolent pilots, idling as they waited to take vessels back out to the ocean; and the packs of free-living sailors-many of them black-pus.h.i.+ng into saloons or staggering drunkenly under the bowsprits that thrust like rafters over South Street. These were men whose lives were all action.33 Cornele learned this scene well as he entered his teenage years, for he took on more and more responsibility for his father's periauger. As he sailed past fat merchantmen or sleek navy frigates, as he talked with s.h.i.+ps' officers along South Street, he began to dream of possibilities beyond those on Staten Island. Cornele learned this scene well as he entered his teenage years, for he took on more and more responsibility for his father's periauger. As he sailed past fat merchantmen or sleek navy frigates, as he talked with s.h.i.+ps' officers along South Street, he began to dream of possibilities beyond those on Staten Island.

At the end of 1807, the possibilities grew smaller. The city's frenzied trade abruptly halted when Congress pa.s.sed the Embargo Act, at President Jefferson's urging, in a vain attempt to force Britain to lift restrictions on American s.h.i.+ps and cease the impressment of American sailors amid its long war with France. The act prohibited the nation's vessels from sailing for foreign ports. "Not a box, bale, cask, barrel, or package was to be seen upon the wharfs," John Lambert observed. "The few solitary merchants, clerks, porters, and labourers that were to be seen were walking about with their hands in their pockets."34 In March 1809, when Congress finally repealed the act, joy swept New York, and s.h.i.+ps were again readied for distant ports. In March 1809, when Congress finally repealed the act, joy swept New York, and s.h.i.+ps were again readied for distant ports.

After James Madison a.s.sumed the presidency in 1809, Congress continued to tinker with the idea of using trade to influence Britain and France-especially Britain, so detested by Madison and most Republicans. The Royal Navy, meanwhile, swept down on American s.h.i.+ps with rising ferocity, seizing vessels and sailors under the notorious Orders in Council, which required neutral vessels to abide by Britain's blockade of Napoleon's empire. A crew could make enormous profits by running a s.h.i.+p to continental European ports, but at a tremendous risk that grew almost by the day.

In that tense and warlike world, young Cornele made a momentous decision. Early in 1810, after bringing pa.s.sengers and goods to the city, he strode down South Street to see a captain he knew. The captain's s.h.i.+p was a fast-sailing merchantman, about to make the dangerous run to France with a cargo of silks-a luxury that would sell for a high price in the blockaded ports of Napoleon's Europe. Cornele was just fifteen, but he was tall and strong and an able sailor; when he applied for a place, the captain agreed to take him on as a member of the crew, with a regular share of the fortune they would gain. The act marked an abrupt end to Cornele's already tenuous childhood. Once he stepped onto that s.h.i.+p, he would depart the gritty marketplace and enter into a life of action for action's sake. He sailed the boat home that night, determined to tell his parents that he would be leaving Staten Island for good.35 "IT IS AS IF WE ALL CARRY in our makeup the effects of accidents that have befallen our ancestors," writes V. S. Naipaul, "as if we are in many ways programmed before we are born, our lives half outlined for us." in our makeup the effects of accidents that have befallen our ancestors," writes V. S. Naipaul, "as if we are in many ways programmed before we are born, our lives half outlined for us."36 For a farm-born fifteen-year-old in 1810, it was nearly impossible to shrug off the weight of time. Cornele had acted forcefully when he signed on to that blockade runner, yet he still faced a formidable obstacle: his mother. She "found out," he later said, "and begged him so earnestly not to go." For a farm-born fifteen-year-old in 1810, it was nearly impossible to shrug off the weight of time. Cornele had acted forcefully when he signed on to that blockade runner, yet he still faced a formidable obstacle: his mother. She "found out," he later said, "and begged him so earnestly not to go."

There were dangers enough to startle her, from storms and disease to the threat of impressment into the British navy. More to the point, Phebe and her husband relied heavily on their oldest son as she continued to bear children. Cornele, who would become legendary for his ruthlessness, listened to his mother's pleading and was moved. He reluctantly told his father, he later recalled, "If he could get him honorably released from his engagement he would remain." The senior Cornelius promptly went to see the captain and settled the matter. It was a fortunate decision. Cornele later learned that the British captured the s.h.i.+p in the English Channel on that very voyage.37 The weight of the past pushed him back onto Staten Island, but it also subtly bent this would-be turning point in another direction. Cornele would return to the periauger as his own commander. But here, as so often in his childhood, the truth has been polished. According to an oft-repeated account, he learned of a periauger for sale at Port Richmond and agreed to purchase it for $100. Phebe would loan the boy the money if he cleared, plowed, and sowed an eight-acre lot that belonged to the family, a plot "so hard, rough, and stony," according to nineteenth-century biographer W. A. Croffut, "that it had never been ploughed." And he had to do it by his sixteenth birthday.

They agreed to the terms on May 1, so he had little time to spare. He gathered his friends and promised them a summer on the water in his boat, filled with fis.h.i.+ng, sailing, and excursions to the city which induced them to help him finish the job in the allotted time. His mother inspected the plot, then went to her clock and drew out the hundred dollars. Her son hurried down to Port Richmond, silver jingling in his pocket, knowing that he would not use the boat for fun, as he had told his friends, but for profit.38 Here again we have a tale from Vanderbilt's early life offered to us by his later admirers as a record of his virtues, a parable of the enterprising American spirit. But the earliest published account of his life, in a